A refrigerator is a home appliance that is used to keep food and drink refrigerated or frozen.
Recently, the refrigerator is increasing in size, and devices such as home bar, ice maker, shelf, or door box are being installed onto rear surface of the refrigerator door. In this case, when a refrigerator door is closed, shelves or storage boxes mounted in the storage compartment of the refrigerator body and components mounted on the rear surface of the refrigerator door may interfere with each other.
In order to overcome this interference, the front end portions of the shelves or storage boxes mounted in the storage compartment, i.e., refrigerating compartment or freezing compartment of the refrigerator body are disposed at points spaced away from the front surface of the refrigerator body by a certain distance.
Accordingly, there is inconvenience in that a user needs to dip into the storage compartment to withdraw food and drink stored in the shelves or storage boxes, and it is difficult for a user to check foods stored at the rear side of the storage compartment. This limitation is more significant in a large refrigerator. In case of a large refrigerator, since the horizontal length of the refrigerating compartment or the freezing compartment is larger, it is difficult for a user to withdraw foods deeply stored in the rear end portion of the shelf.
Various methods have been proposed to improve these limitations. Particularly, Korean Patent Application Publication No. 2010-0130357 (Dec. 13, 2010) filed by the present applicant discloses a structure in which a shelf and a storage box installed inside the refrigerating compartment or the freezing compartment are placed on a storage frame and the storage frame is connected to the undersurface of the refrigerator door by a multi joint link. Accordingly, when the refrigerator door is rotated and opened, the storage frame moves forward, and the shelf and the storage box move to the front side of the refrigerator.
In this case, the loads of the shelf and the storage box are all delivered to the storage frame. In other words, the storage frame supports all of the loads of the shelf and the storage box and loads of foods stored therein. Accordingly, since a user has to apply a great force to open the refrigerator door, the elderly and infirm, women, and children may feel significantly difficult to open the refrigerator door.
In addition, since the frame structure to withdraw the shelves is exposed to the outside, the inside of the refrigerator may not look neat, and there may be difficulty in cleaning the inside of the refrigerator.